The Quilt Blog: A Restoration Project

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Christmas of 1985, my great-grandmother took my mother up to the attic bedroom of her old Minnesota farmhouse and told her to choose a quilt from the cedar chest for baby me. My mother chose one with tulip appliqué squares and lilac-colored border.

Parts of this quilt are over 100 years old, and it's entirely hand stitched. Great Grandma was born in 1908 and family lore goes that she made the squares with her own mother when she was a child, assembled the quilt top as a teenager, and finished the quilt in her quilting club as an adult.

Over the years it's fallen into disrepair. It was consigned to my parents' attic for several years before I rescued it to repair it, but when I brought it home I realized just how much work was ahead of me. Much of the original stitching has broken, the fabric in several of the flowers is torn or missing, there are stains to contend with.

This will be a long-range project, which I don't expect to be finished anytime soon. I've never made a quilt before and I want to include as much of the original fabric in the restoration as possible, so I'll be getting in touch with my local quilting guild for guidance.

This blog is intended to be primarily documenting my progress in restoring this quilt to its former beauty.

(Main blog is over here: https://spindledreams.tumblr.com/)

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I've been intending to get started on Square Three, but I started a new job at the end of February and haven't had time between work, additional training hours at home, making time for my kids and housework. I've been feeling 100% drained at the end of the day and don't have any motivation for crafting. Feels like I can have a job or hobbies, but I don't have the energy or time for both. I'm going to try to get Square Three done by the end of the month as planned. I still want to have the whole quilt finished and cleaned up by the end of December.

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Second square done!

I have some non-quilt things to attend to, so I probably won't start square three till next week, but I had only planned one square a month so if I can get two squares finished a month, I'll have this done by summertime.

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Forgot I had an embroidery frame buried in my craft supplies!

It's still only big enough to do half a square at a time but it holds better than the hoop.

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Frame is here! I didn't want to stitch it to the leaders so it's just clipped for now. But the cat has decided to walk on it and pulled the quilt off some of the clips, so I might have to baste it. And also get a spray bottle to squirt the cat.

I haven't had any time to get any stitching done, with other administrative nonsense (it's tax season and I'm also looking for a job, so it's been a lot of forms to fill out the last few days) and housework. But I intend to trace the petals to make my patterns this evening and will pin them back on tonight for stitching probably tomorrow.

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Unfortunately, this didn't work out like I'd hoped. It was difficult to get the tension right to make the repairs I need to make, and I couldn't get the petals to lay flat while stitching or see my stitching lines. I've broken the frame down to store for now until I decide whether or not quilting is a craft I want to take up, and will go back to the embroidery hoop method. I'll use what I have for now and try to source a deeper hoop that's capable of holding three layers of fabric without popping off in a few weeks.

[spindlequilts]

Frame is here! I didn't want to stitch it to the leaders so it's just clipped for now. But the cat has decided to walk on it and pulled the quilt off some of the clips, so I might have to baste it. And also get a spray bottle to squirt the cat.

I haven't had any time to get any stitching done, with other administrative nonsense (it's tax season and I'm also looking for a job, so it's been a lot of forms to fill out the last few days) and housework. But I intend to trace the petals to make my patterns this evening and will pin them back on tonight for stitching probably tomorrow.

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Block 2 before:

So far I've taken off the petals and removed the black thread. Tomorrow I'll iron them, pin them on, and start stitching.

I might trace them before I pin them on; I will need to cut new fabric for another square because one petal is completely missing and the others are badly frayed.

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First square is finished!

Six days and probably 20 hours of hand stitching all told, at least judging by the number of TV show episodes and Youtube documentaries I've watched while stitching.

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Okay, I guess I don't hate this. From the distance I will usually be looking at it, it looks almost the same as the original stitching.

I don't intend to stare at it six inches from my face so I can live with it.

Also the animals are feeling neglected.

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I'm not sure how much I like this.

There was no perfect match at the quilt shop yesterday and Walmart only has polyester thread, which I don't want in an otherwise fully cotton quilt.

The greener one by itself is too yellow.

The bluer one by itself is too blue.

I was hoping they would balance out when used together and it almost works, but I don't know if I like it in practice.

I suspect Great-Grandma used embroidery floss for the applique stitching. The black is in worse shape than the green but even the green was shredding when I took it out. I couldn't get more than four inches of length from any given pieces. Looking closely at individual stitches the thread doesn't seem nearly as tightly spun as the new thread, even the black thread (different brand than the greens).

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I bit the bullet and bought a (used) quilting frame because I'm tired of my hoop popping off the back of the quilt whenever I look at it funny. I'll keep working with the hoop while I wait for the frame to arrive so I can keep making progress but the frame will definitely help.

I finished the black thread around the petals last night. Today I'm going to work on the green around the stems.

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I had to visit two quilt shops to get materials. First shop had a fabric I liked but no thread, so they sent me to another shop, where I found a fabric I liked better. The fabric is obviously not going to be a print match because the original is 100 years old, but I did find one in a similar color with a pattern I thought would work.

I also found cream thread for the quilting and two shades of green to hold together for the appliqués, because there wasn't a perfect match. Unfortunately, I suspect I will have to fully restitch the green because I couldn't find that perfect match and the new green will be obviously different from the original. But the stems aren't falling apart so I should be able to pin, cut the old stitching, and restitch without too much trouble. I probably will not have this first square finished before Sunday though.

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Repairs are underway

and Felix is "helping."

Pardon his face. I said he couldn't eat my thread.

Tomorrow morning I'll take the quilt to the quilt shop in town after green and cream threads. I hope to get these flowers fixed up by the weekend.

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Ironed and tacked down. Tomorrow, we stitch!

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January 28th and I'm JUST getting to this. Partly I've been busy, and partly I've been putting it off because it's scary.

But today I need to get started.

I got the front petal off the first flower and learned that she stitched the petals down first and then did the stems:

So i also have to cut the thread from the very tops of the stems to finish these repairs. I'm going to try to get enough green thread salvaged to take to the quilt shop in town to match so I don't have to take the thread off around the entire stem. I will also have to re-quilt the center petals because the quilting tacked down the side petals.

I do have to wonder what she used to mark the squares because the marks are still there after 100+ years and I don't even know how many washes.

One flower down... two more to go for this square!

Petals removed. I'm going to fray-check, iron, and pin them back in place, and tomorrow I'll start stitching them back down.

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This isn't the quilt project I made this blog for but it feels like a good practice project to play with.

This is Sari's Quilt Kit from American Girl's Kirsten collection. These kits make a small quilt meant for a 4" ragdoll, and were marketed to children ages 8-12. It was originally introduced in 1987 and it has been retired since 2009; finding one that has not been completed and has all the parts intact is difficult. I found this one (tagged 1993) on eBay and it arrived this week. It was only missing the needle, but I have plenty of hand-sewing needles.

Right away you can tell the person who developed this kit was not a quilter. The instructions leave quite a bit to be desired.

The hearts are simply cut, no extra fabric to fold over the edges and press to keep them from fraying.

I wanted to Follow The Directions, so I did go against my better judgment and tried to stitch the first heart on without doing any of the prep work that experience has taught me is needed, and it frayed and pulled off the quilt after four stitches. So the next step was to put fray check on all three hearts, and then clip 1/8" into the curves and fold the edges in. So far this is much more work than an average inexperienced nine year old would have been able to do without a more experienced adult to help.

I split the pink embroidery floss into individual strands, threaded two strands onto my smallest needle, and stitched the hearts on with a blanket stitch, which luckily I know how to do because the one little picture in the instructions wouldn't have helped me if I didn't have any embroidery experience. The hoop got in my way so I took it off.

I opted to put the doll's initials instead of mine, and the year 1855 because the story this quilt was made in is set in that year.

When I finished the appliqués and initials, I fixed the obvious closure seam because it was bothering me.

Then I went a step farther than the directions and *actually quilted* it, using single strands of the remaining pink thread to stitch around the edges of all the appliqués and squares, as well as adding hearts to the border. I did run out of the supplies thread but I had a matching pink in my stash.

Every square is quilted, but the print on a few of them is busy or light-colored and the stitching is hard to see! If I had it to do over again I probably would have chosen a darker pink.

It doesn't have any batting - I considered adding a little square of felt "batting" but that felt like a lot more work on a tiny quilt for a doll. So it can be a summer coverlet.